Data is collected, organized, and processed for virtually every transaction and communication that occurs in today's global economy. The integrity of this information (e.g., the authenticity and/or security of a message) has become important to enterprises and individuals. Consequently, a variety of techniques for securing and replicating information exist in the industry, including information backup processes to protect against disk failure and other kinds of catastrophic data loss.
Operating systems commonly store an archive bit in conjunction with each file. When the file is created or modified, the archive bit is set to indicate the file has not been backed up since the last change was made. After the file is backed up (e.g., using a snapshot operation), the archive bit can be reset. However, scripts that operate to reset archive bits for corresponding origin files may not function correctly in some instances, since a file that has been backed-up might be modified between the time a snapshot is taken of the file, and the time its archive bit is reset.